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Alabama lawmakers getting 4.25% pay increase in 2025

Alabama lawmakers are getting a 4.25% raise next year, bringing their annual salaries to $62,212, according to the Alabama State Personnel Department.

For almost a decade, pay for the 140 members of the Legislature has been tied to the state’s median household income. A 2012 voter-approved amendment that was initially a pay cut for many lawmakers put their salaries at $42,849 in 2015. Since then, they’ve received raises each year except two.

The household earning figure comes from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey. It increased from $59,674 in 2022 to $62,212 in 2023.

While they’re earning nearly $20,000 more than in 2015, lawmakers would be earning even more had Republican leadership not advocated for the change. Alabama Daily News reported last year that lawmakers would have gotten $69,757 in 2024 under a previous raise structure, according to an analysis by the Legislative Services Agency.

In 2007, the then-Democratic-controlled Legislature passed a 61% pay raise, overriding the veto of then-Gov. Bob Riley, a Republican. Backlash over that raise, which put legislative salaries at $49,500 and included annual raises, helped the GOP take over the Legislature in 2010.

“Alabama legislators do not control their own legislative compensation and are barred from voting on any increase in their compensation by the constitutional amendment Alabamians voted for in 2012,” Harrison Adams, a spokesman for Senate President Pro Tem Greg Reed, told Alabama Daily News.

“The people of Alabama decided this issue, and the will of the people is what has and will continue to carry the day.”

Similarly, Speaker of the House Nathaniel Ledbetter’s office said in a written statement the conditional amendment pre-dates Ledbetter’s time in the Legislature.

“Being a CA, the people of Alabama voted on it, and the speaker has full trust in their judgment,” the statement said.

The 2012 amendment allows most lawmakers to be reimbursed more for travel to and from Montgomery. 

In-state travel for the Legislature, including employees, went from $40,152 in fiscal 2014 to $959,820 in fiscal 2024, according to spending records available at open.alabama.gov.

Lawmakers earn the same amount whether in session or not and don’t receive additional money for special sessions.

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